I acquired this SuperBrain in early 2004, it had been sitting unused in a
basement for nearly 10 years, was covered in dust, and had become the home to
a mouse (not the computer kind!). With some careful cleaning and TLC, it
booted right up.
The Intertec SuperBrain is fairly typical of a number of "All in One" CP/M systems which were available in the early 1980's. Unique feaetures of the "brain" included TWO Z80 processors (the second was was for disk I/O), and the ability to create user defined character sets.
Here is a Intec Advertisement from 1981 KiloBaud.
Here is a Intertec Advertisement from 1983 Byte. (320k JPG)
Here is a Price List from 1983 Byte Magazine.
The SuperBrain was donated by Chris Witkowski.
The CompuStar/SuperBrain II was donated by Markus Wandel.
Click any photo to view a large high-resolution image.
I acquired this SuperBrain in early 2004, it had been sitting unused in a
basement for nearly 10 years, was covered in dust, and had become the home to
a mouse (not the computer kind!). With some careful cleaning and TLC, it
booted right up.
This particular machine has stickers with the APL character set on the
face of the keys.
All of the main logic is located on a single board with the keyboard.
Compare the board with the layouts given in the schematics (below),
and you can see that this is the original SuperBrain (I).
Views: Left-Side, Right-Side, Back, Keyboard.
Note the thick layer of tin foil taped behind the disk drives. I removed this for
some of the rear photos and the machine began to experience frequent disk errors -
apparently noise from the switching power supply under and to the rear of the drives
was causing problems. I have since constructed a solid metal plate which bolts
behind the drives (using existing chassis mounting holes) which eliminated the
problem.
A large and imposing looking machine, it is not as heavy as it looks. The
cabinet is constructed of "structural foam" according to the literature.
This "CompuStar Model 30" is a rebadged SuperBrainII. Note that it
looks identical to the SuperBrain above except for the labels.
Inside front view of the CompuStar/SuperBrainII.
Compare the board with the layouts given in the schematics (below),
and you can see that this is the SuperBrain II.
Inside rear view of the CompuStar/SuperBrainII - Note the different
location of the power supply, and additional shielding over the CRT.
The SuperBrain-QD has "quad density" drives, storing twice as much
data as the standard unit. This particular machine requires extensive
restoration. More information and pictures when I get to it.
Donated by Paul Sahota.
